Clive james
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Home>>Poetry>>Poetry Collections>>Angels over Elsinore

A City with Green Fingers

Picture
for Professor Helen Armstrong
Green fingers ought to reach from land to sea
When Brisbane is two hundred old miles long,
And punctuate its continuity
Like breathing spaces built into a song --
Lest glass and concrete irretrievably
Convert a whole coastline into Hong Kong:
This you convinced me of, one fine spring day,
As we stood at the edge of Moreton Bay.

You drove me through the fields of sugar cane:
One house per hill, one little hill per mile.
Developers would see a land in pain
Aching to be a sea of brick and tile.
I still thought, though it went against the grain,
Less greedy planners with a sense of style
Might do their best as they did what they must.
What else can suburbs eat but the earth’s crust?

The car ran out of road at the bay shore.
There was a jetty, pilings, a few boats,
A single single-storey general store
With cakes and ice-cream, sinkers and cork floats --
At first I thought there might be nothing more
But found, among my hasty mental notes,
A startling fact. On every piling stood
A pelican as if carved out of wood.

I’d barely asked “Are they alive, those things?“
When the whole flock prepared itself for flight.
Posing girl gymnasts, they uncranked their wings
And took off all at once as if to fight
The Luftwaffe. We watched them running rings
Around the sky before they dived to bite
The water like ditch-diggers. For the fish,
Not quite, perhaps, the finish they would wish:

Nevertheless, here was the world we made
Unmade to what it always might have been
If the first men had failed to make the grade
And died off leaving the whole pristine scene
Intact. A never-never everglade,
It reacquainted me with blue and green
As primary colours. “Children should see this,”
I said, and you said, “This is what we miss.”

We miss it most, of course, the less aware
We are of what was bound to be destroyed
By our urge to create. Raised in the glare
Of artificial light, we treat the void
Within ourselves as if it wasn’t there.
We’re pleased, if not exactly overjoyed,
When cities grow to prove us, too, a force
Of nature infinite in its resource.

Nor do our modern Babylons and Troys
Always rate nought on the aesthetic scale.
Night-time New York’s a song that never cloys
By Gershwin, and does Paris ever fail
To bring the rapture of unwrapping toys
At Christmas back to mind? It’s a false trail,
However, to think one man, in advance,
Can replicate the play of time and chance.

And even he, the dreaming genius
Of new Brasilias and Chandigarhs --
Computer diagrams that dazzle us
Like science-fiction schemes to join the stars,
With neon tunnels for the shuttle-bus
And looping freeways for electric cars --
Will throw in the odd pikelet of green park
To make his stunning project look less stark.

He should take his own hint, and leave the view
Open for good long stretches to the tide
So that his exponential spanking new
Brainchild can lie unseen on either side
While people rest from know-how and can-do
And the upthrust output of their vaulting pride
By contemplating how the world of men
Came from this, and might come to this again.

​Green fingers of a giant, generous hand
Spread and extended to the thundering beach.
Green fingers stretching from a hinterland
Too far back for the outer works to reach
Of the self-besieging city. Surf and sand
Open to all by right. The things you teach
Will help keep hope alive when we are gone,
Helen. Your quest is good. May it go on.

Poems

  • Meteor IV at Cowes
  • Overview
  • We Being Ghosts
  • Ghost Train to Australia
  • Yusra
  • Status Quo Vadis
  • Tramps and Bowlers
  • The Nymph Calypso
  • Angels Over Elsinore
  • Double or Quits
  • Natural Selection
  • Dreams Before Sleeping
  • Naomi from Namibia
  • Fires Burning, Fires Burning
  • Return of the Lost City
  • Portrait of Man Writing
  • Museum of the Unmoving Image​
  • A Gyre from Brother Jack
  • A City with Green Fingers
  • Diamond Pens of the Bus Vandals
  • When We Were Kids
  • Mystery of the Silver Chair
  • Private Prayer at Yasukuni Shrine
  • Sonnet After Wyatt
  • Paddington Departures
  • Les Saw It First
  • The Genesis Wafers
  • Literary Lunch
  • Exit Don Giovanni
  • At Ian Hamilton's Funeral
  • Press Release from Plato
  • You, Mark Antony
  • Lock Me Away
  • Young Lady Going to Dakar
  • State Funeral
  • Publisher's Party
  • The Zero Pilot
  • Iron Horse
  • Statement from the Secretary of Defense
  • Only Divine
  • My Father Before Me
  • The Magic Wheel
  • The Serpent Beguiled Me
  • Woman Resting
  • The Australian Suicide Bomber's Heavenly Reward
  • Windows Is Shutting Down
  • Anniversary Serenade
  • Belated Homage to Derek Walcott





Reviews of Angels over Elsinore

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Telegraph
Peter Stothard
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  • Home
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      • The Texture of Reality
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    • Unreliable Memoirs
    • Falling Towards England
    • May Week Was In June
    • North Face of Soho
    • The Blaze of Obscurity
    • Latest Readings
    • Cultural Amnesia
    • Play All
    • A Point Of View
    • Flying Visits
  • Essays
    • Visions Before Midnight
    • The Crystal Bucket
    • Glued To The Box
    • The Metropolitan Critic
    • At the Pillars of Hercules
    • As of This Writing
    • The Meaning of Recognition >
      • Introduction
      • Polanski and the Pianist
      • Fantasy in the West Wing
      • Pushkin's Deadly Gift
      • Great Sopranos of Our Time
      • A Memory Called Malouf
      • Bing Crosby's Hidden Art
      • Larkin Treads the Boards
      • The Iron Capital of Bruno Schulz
      • Criticism a la Frank Kermode
      • Fast Talking Dames
      • Rough Guides to Shakespeare
      • General Election Sequence 2001
      • Primo Levi and the Painted Veil
      • A Big Boutique of Australian Essays
      • Cyrano on the Scaffold
      • A Nightclub in Bali
      • Aldous Huxley Then and Now
      • A Man Called Peter Porter
      • Philip Roth's Alternative America
      • The Miraculous Vineyard of Australian Poetry
      • Save Us From Celebrity
    • The Revolt of the Pendulum >
      • The Question of Karl Kraus
      • John Bayley's Daily Bread
      • Kingsley and the Women
      • Canetti Man of Mystery
      • Camille Paglia Burns for Poetry
      • The Guidebook Detectives
      • Zuckerman Uncorked
      • The Flight from the Destroyer
      • Saying Famous Things
      • Insult to the Language
      • The Perfectly Bad Sentence
      • Happiness Writes White
      • All Stalkers Kill
      • Best Eaten Cold
      • White Shorts of Leni Reifenstahl
      • Made in Britain, More or Less
      • Movie Criticism in America
      • Show Me the Horror
      • The Measure of A.D. Hope
      • Robert Hughes Remembers
      • Modern Australian Painting
      • On Diamond Jim McClelland
      • The Voice of John Anderson
      • Niki Lauda Wins Going Slowly
      • Damon Hill's Bravest Day
      • Jonathan James-Moore
      • Ian Adam
      • Pat Kavanagh
      • Starting with Sludge
    • Guest Writers >
      • Zoe Williams
      • Russell Davies
      • Bryan Appleyard
      • Marina Hyde
      • Bruce Beresford
      • Michael Frayn
  • Poetry
    • Poetry Collections >
      • Injury Time
      • Sentenced to Life >
        • Japanese Maple
        • Sentenced to Life
        • Procedure for Disposal
        • Leçons des ténèbres
        • Driftwood Houses
        • Event Horizon
        • Neuland
        • Echo Point
        • Change of Domicile
        • Holding Court
        • Too Much Light
        • Nature Programme
        • My Latest Fever
        • Nina Kogan's Geometrical Heaven
        • The Emperor's Last Words
        • Winter Plums
      • Nefertiti in the Flak Tower >
        • Whitman and the Moth
        • The Falcon Growing Old
      • Angels over Elsinore
      • The Book of My Enemy >
        • Recent Verse
        • Verse Letters
      • Opal Sunset
      • Other Passports >
        • Recent Verse >
          • The Book of My Enemy has been Remaindered
        • Parodies etc.
        • Earlier Verse
        • Verse Diaries
      • Fan Mail >
        • To Russell Davies: a letter from Cardiff
        • To Martin Amis: a letter from Indianapolis
        • To Pete Atkin: a letter from Paris
        • To Prue Shaw: a letter from Cambridge
        • To Tom Stoppard: a letter from London
        • To Peter Porter: a letter to Sydney
    • Epic Poems >
      • The River in the Sky
      • Gate of Lilacs
      • The Divine Comedy >
        • Hell - Cantos 1-3
        • Purgatory - Cantos 1-3
        • Heaven - Cantos 1-3
      • Poem of the Year
    • Books About Poetry >
      • Somewhere Becoming Rain
      • Poetry Notebook >
        • Listening for the Flavour
        • Five Favourite Poetry Books
        • Velvet Shackles
        • Meeting MacNiece
        • The Donaghy Negotiation
    • Poetry Readings
    • Articles on Poetry
    • Back from The Web
    • Guest Poets >
      • Daniel Brown
      • Liane Strauss
      • Les Murray
      • Peter Porter
      • Alan Jenkins
      • Stephen Edgar
      • John Stammers
      • Simon Barraclough
      • Isobel Dixon
      • Christian Wiman
      • Olivia Cole
      • Judith Beveridge
      • Peter Goldsworthy
      • Kapka Kassabova
  • Lyrics
    • My life in lyrics
    • Selected Song Lyrics >
      • Dancing Master
      • Faded Mansion
      • Have You got a Biro I can Borrow?
      • I Have to Learn to Live Alone Again
      • Hill of Little Shoes
      • History & Geography
      • I See the Joker
      • Laughing Boy
      • My Brother's Keeper
      • National Steel
      • Nothing Left to Say
      • Sessionman's Blues
      • Song for Rita
      • Stranger in Town
      • Sunlight Gate
      • The Egoist
      • The Eye of the Universe
      • The Ice Cream Man
      • Femme Fatale
      • The Master of the Revels
      • Thirty-year Man
      • Winter Spring
  • Video
    • Talking in the Library >
      • Series One
      • Series Two
      • Series Three
      • Series Four
      • Series Five
    • Postcards
    • CJ on YouTube
  • Radio
    • A Point Of View
    • Book Talk